Oil spill illustrates tradeoffs that offshore drilling brings

View full size(AP file)In this file photo taken Aug. 19, 2008, the Chevron Genesis Oil Rig Platform in the Gulf of Mexico near New Orleans, La. is seen.

If it had to happen, the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion comes at an instructive time. What better way to illustrate the dangers of offshore drilling just as the nation is poised to do more of it?

It was just over a month ago that Mobile business leaders began promoting the area as the logical supply base for exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, including an area south of the Florida Panhandle that is among those President Barack Obama had proposed opening.

Bryan Gobin is familiar with the tradeoff -- the coveted economic impact offered by increasing Gulf drilling versus the risk of a catastrophic spill. And he thinks, going forward, the equation needs to change where coastal communities are concerned.

"When it comes to industrial activity, often those least capable of bearing risk are forced to bear most of it because they have less economic or political bargaining power," said Gobin. People who work in the tourism and seafood industries along the coast benefit from oil production just like everyone else in the nation, he explained. But those other people don't risk losing a livelihood when spills occur.

"It's a raw deal," said Gobin, now a consultant based in Newark, Delaware.

To see updated projection maps related to the oil spill
in the Gulf, visit the Deepwater
Horizon Response Web site established by government officials.

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Gobin is a regional economist by trade, and someone with deep ties to the central Gulf Coast. He has family in Mobile. He's logged time as a researcher for the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, and also worked for the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta studying banking, business and consumer issues in Hurricane Katrina-affected areas.

To do his math, Gobin used a variety of sources:

-- According to 2008 statistics prepared by Smith Travel Research, Mobile and Baldwin counties had 7.2 million visitors who supported 39,000 direct tourism jobs and $1.3 billion of total direct and indirect spending.

-- According to the Auburn University Marine Extension & Research Center, the wholesale value of fish and seafood caught just in Alabama waters during 2007 amounted to $40.7 million for shrimp, $1 million for mullet and $2.7 million for oysters.

-- Fully developing Alabama's offshore resources would increase the state's economic output by $20.8 million annually and means another 80 long-term jobs to the state, according to Brian Johnson of Americans for Tax Reform.

And Gobin's take on the numbers?

"The presumed $20.8 million in economic output derived from more offshore drilling is equal to the cost of giving each Alabama resident a small Frappuccino from Starbucks or this year's cost of running the Mobile County jail," he said. "That's a drop in the bucket."

Gobin said states should work to make sure that coastal communities are properly compensated with trust funds or development funds as part of any new offshore drilling deals. He also stressed the need for local environmental groups, the seafood industry, manufacturing, and recreational fishermen to get together and "address a common cause in managing and preserving scarce natural resources" such as estuaries, wetlands and other fragile ecosystems.

"What is the value of preserving the bayous, rivers, bays and Gulf beaches that cast seafood into our plates, plow sales tax revenues in our state treasury, and replenish and define our cultural heritage for successive generations? Most would say these are priceless."